Chrysler was the third of four children of Henry (“Hank”) and Anna Marie (“Mary”) Chrysler. When he was three, his family moved to Ellis, Kan., where his father, a lifelong railroad engineer, went to work for the Kansas Pacific Railroad (later a division of the Union Pacific Railroad Company).

As a child, Walter Chrysler dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps in the railroad business. He developed a passion for machinery that would last his entire life. Although Hank Chrysler was adamant that his son go to college, Walter defied him and began an apprenticeship in a railroad machine shop when he was 17 years old. He spent the next 20 years working his way up the echelons of railroad engineering,

Chrysler worked his way up to plant manager for American Locomotive Company but left to become a manager for the Buick Motor Company. By 1916 he was company president. He resigned in 1919 after making Buick the strongest unit of General Motors. Six months after his resignation he assumed direction of Willys-Overland Company and of Maxwell Motor Company, Inc., which became the Chrysler Corporation in 1925. The new company produced a car that Chrysler designed. The car, which featured a high-compression engine, was highly successful, and the Maxwell car disappeared

developing a reputation for his creative mechanical mind and his tireless enthusiasm. Quoting the poet Walt Whitman, he once said of his work, “To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”

In 1901, after an engagement of nearly five years, Chrysler married his childhood sweetheart, Della Forker, and they settled in Salt Lake City, Utah, where Chrysler was working for the Denver and Rio Grande Railway (later part of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Company). The couple had four children—Thelma, Bernice, Walter, Jr., and Jack. Chrysler enjoyed the itinerant life of the railroad business, and the family moved frequently as he accepted positions of increasing responsibility. He made a name for himself as a master of plant efficiency, culminating in a position as works manager of the American Locomotive Company in Pittsburgh, Pa., at a starting salary of $8,000 a year.

In 1908 Chrysler bought his first car, the Locomobile. He had fallen in love with the sleek vehicle when he saw it at the Chicago Auto Show, but its $5,000 price tag was far above his means. He had only $700 in savings and a family to support, and he did not know how to drive. But, unable to get the car out of his mind, he borrowed $4,300 to make the purchase and had the car shipped home by rail. Before he even figured out how to drive his new possession, Chrysler spent time studying its mechanical system, taking it apart and putting it back together again, until he knew it through and through.

At General Motors

Chrysler did not enter the automobile business until he was 36 years old, when he met Charles Nash, president of General Motors (GM). At the time, Chrysler was earning $12,000 a year at the American Locomotive Company, but Nash persuaded him to join GM as the manager of the Buick plant in Flint, Mich., for only half that amount. In the years to come, Chrysler would completely revolutionize Buick’s manufacturing system, introducing assembly-line processes pioneered by Henry Ford and more than tripling production.

In 1915, when William (“Billy”) Durant, the GM founder, returned to run the company, he took note of Chrysler’s achievements, and in 1916 he made him president of Buick. Under Chrysler’s leadership, Buick became the strongest unit of General Motors and the most successful automobile brand in the country.

Durant and Chrysler were both men of strong personalities, and they were often in conflict, especially over expenditures. Chrysler was a brilliant cost-cutter who had always maintained that keeping the company lean was the secret to building affordable cars. He was famous for having said, “Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy [i.e., efficient] way of doing it.” In contrast, Durant was a dreamer who favoured the idea that spending more money could lead to greater growth. In 1919 the two men’s different philosophies came to a head over the cost of frame manufacturing. Chrysler wanted to sign a contract with an outside company to supply Buick with its frames, at an estimated savings of close to $2 million a year. Durant simultaneously announced plans to build a $6 million Buick frame plant in Flint. Chrysler, unable to stomach such a wild expenditure, resigned from the company. Although Durant and Chrysler did not see eye-to-eye on business matters, they remained lifelong friends, and Durant dedicated his unfinished autobiography in part to Chrysler.

From Maxwell Motors to Chrysler

Within a year of his resignation from Buick, Chrysler had assumed direction of both Willys-Overland Company and Maxwell Motor Company, Inc. At the time, Maxwell was an ailing company, drowning in debt. Chrysler set about reviving it, introducing the Chrysler Six in January 1924 during the New York Automobile Show. The genius of Chrysler’s new car was not only its advanced engine technology and its stylish appearance but its price: under $2,000, it was priced for average folk. The low-cost car was a hit with the public, and some 32,000 units were built and sold in a single year. The Chrysler brand was such a success that in 1925 the Maxwell Motor Corporation was reorganized into the Chrysler Corporation.

In 1928 Chrysler purchased Dodge Brothers, Inc., and later that year introduced the first Plymouth model to compete with

Ford

modestly priced Fords and

Chevrolet

Chevrolets. The corporation became a major company in the American automotive industry, and Chrysler was named Time magazine’s 1928 Man of the Year. He was riding high that year, as the Chrysler Corporation entered the top tier of American automaking, alongside General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.

Not content just to build iconic automobiles, Chrysler turned his attention to the erection of an iconic building. Between 1928 and 1930 he supervised the construction of the Chrysler Building, a striking Art Deco skyscraper, 77 stories high, on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street in New York City. Until the Empire State Building was completed in 1931, the Chrysler Building was the tallest building in the world. The structure was a separate endeavour from the auto business, designed as a business venture for Chrysler’s two sons, who were not interested in joining their father in the car industry.

Chrysler retired as president of his company in 1935, though he stayed on as chairman of the board until his death. In 1937 he published his life story in serial format; these articles were later gathered into an autobiography, Life of an American Workman (1950). Chrysler’s life story was as much a story of love as it was of work. As he wrote,

The fun I had experienced in making things as a boy was magnified a hundredfold when I began making things as a man. There is in manufacturing a creative joy that only poets are supposed to know. Some day I’d like to show a poet how it feels to design and build a railroad locomotive.

In 1938 Chrysler suffered a stroke at his home on Long Island, N.Y., and that same year his wife died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Two years later Chrysler suffered a second stroke and died at age 65. He was buried beside his wife in the family mausoleum at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Tarrytown, N.Y.

Vincent Curcio, Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Automotive Genius (2000), is a long and detailed biography benefiting from the author’s access to company and family records.